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68 BLETCHLEY PARK AND BEYOND
his key subordinates. 58 To cover its multifarious tasks, he hoped
to have a thousand civilians plus a hundred military staff at a
new sigint centre located somewhere near to the policy-makers
in London. By contrast, the outlying Y stations would be manned
by about five thousand additional personnel, of whom only a
few would be civilians. GCHQ's own core staff fell rapidly from
an end-of-war strength of 8,902 to a projected 1,010 for 1946. 59
Despite the dramatic drop in numbers, Travis concluded that
the post-war deal he had struck with the Treasury was 'on the
whole most satisfactory'. For him it was about quality rather
than quantity. A few days before Christmas 1945 he explained:
'The war proved beyond doubt that the more difficult aspects
of our work call for staff of the highest calibre, the successes
by the Professors and Dons among our temporary staff, especially
perhaps the high grade mathematicians, put that beyond
doubt: He wanted suitable conditions with which to attract
these sorts of people, although he knew this would be difficult.60
Captain Edmund Wilson, Travis's Principal Establishment
Officer, echoed this view, arguing that of the 260 officers to be
kept on in their post-war establishment, some two hundred of
them must have not only initiative but also 'first class brains' .61
Where would GCHQ's new centre be What it craved was a
site in central London, next to the policy-makers, but even with
the post-war demobilisation of many government departments,
nothing suitable could be found. The solution was what John
Betjeman would immortalise as 'Metroland'. GCHQ moved to
the outer fringes of north-west London, close to Harrow and
Pinner. The precise location was Eastcote, which had been used
as a wartime outstation of Bletchley Park. It was also close to
Dollis Hill, where the laboratories of the Post Office Research
Department had built the remarkable 'Colossus' computer.
Together with Stanmore, Eastcote was one of two large outstations
built in 1943 to accommodate the ever-expanding number
of bombes that were being used to cope with the flood of Enigma
traffic. However, while it provided reasonable single-storey buildings
that were superior to the huts of Bletchley, the overall site